Dandillian II

ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT! due to being completely INUNDATED with e-mails, comments, phone calls and hate mail, i have decided to forge ahead with dandillian blog. it may not be hilarious, it may not be of any interest to you in particular and it may make me look like i have an incredibly dull life but i've grown a tad fond of it. facebook certainly is addictive but i found posting a pile of pics for everyone to see and comment on is a bit crude and impersonal in an odd way. strangely enough, it seems i'm reverting to an old-fashioned technique of communicating. next i shall send you all parchments, written with my feathered ink pen and sealed with a drop of wax.

i won't bore you with a thesis on what's been happening in my life over the last 4 months. pics can be located on facebook and if you haven't signed up for it yet, you're probably getting a whole lot more work done than the rest of us. you're not getting off scot-free though, i shall briefly touch on our most recent venture, in which we spent christmas/NY in sydney with the family (without my brother and his wife who were busy circling the globe with their newly acquired cambridge-educated, martini-drinking, air-sniffing dog).

no blog is complete without at least one pic of my niece and/or nephew. and the ferret surrounded by empty beer bottles.

mieke and grandad. shortly after this was taken, she discovered grandads' ears made an irritating, high-pitched squealing noise when she put her hands over his ears thanks to his new hearing aids. he was patient. to a point.

the fairhurst, stein and dawson men.

the ferret that got the cream.

i don't pretend to be a good tourist and the blue mountains were no exception. maybe it was the bucket of wine i drank the night before or lack of sleep due to having to get up for the breakfast part of our bed 'n' breakfast.

but c'mon, they're mountains and they're blue. not rocket surgery.

and therein lie my tales of christmas/NY in sydney. fab time had by all but glad, as always, to get home.

our lovely scottish friend, phyllis day-night, organised for us all to go on a boat-ride up the yarra on the first saturday of the year. boat-ride is a term used loosely; it was more of a beer-swilling, BBQ-eating, wind-in-your-hair kind of extravaganza. as entertaining as it was to watch phylis doing an ice, ice baby rap performance, the only downside was the 80's music. bit embarrassing, but i guess that's what you get for hanging out with a bunch of 40+'s. must get some younger friends. either that, or we do the boat thing at night next time. oh, and it was 42 degrees celsius but luckily this is where the beer-swilling came into action and saved the day.

the lovely yarra.

a bit close and a bit shiny. it was 42 degrees.

Happy Days Part 2

from what i remember (i had quite a few of those cute little minature wine bottles on the flight), our flight to cairns was rather uneventful. after a coach transfer we arrived in port douglas around mid-evening, where we checked into our holiday apartment in true dawson style (threw our bags into our rooms and hurried off to the nearest pub for a drink). saturday was spent getting our bearings (finding the nearest bottleshops and pubs) and then followed up with a fair-dinkum-true-blue aussie barbie by the pool with a coupla coldies.

the nostril shot.

mrs ferret the business of ferrets.

the barbie. Unknowingly, turns out mrs ferret was a constant source of entertainment for the duration of the holiday. it was the evening of the barbie when she encountered her first ever gecko, but by the end of the trip we had convinced her that they were called "decko's". as there is an abundance of them in port douglas, ferret and i spent many an evening giggling like school girls, nudging eachother and kicking eachother under the table every time the word "decko" was used. mature i know.

slippery 1 and slippery 2.

unfortunately, for a majority of our time there it was quite overcast. not cold, it hovered around a perfect 25 degree temperature, but just cloudy.

croca-ma-dilius. we went on a crocodile tour boat thingy, it was amazing how the man knew where to look for them, at first i thought they had probably just planted little plastic crocodiles at certain spots for us tourists, but then one swam away and my conspiracy plan was shattered. hmmm, UNLESS they were mechanical plastic croco-ma-diles?

only a bunch of poms would travel some 10,562 miles to 'strayl-ya to sit in the apartment and eat a traditional pie + mash meal. i cannot lie though, someone asked me the other day if i could choose anything in the world, what would my last meal be? i said, my husbands' pie mash and a nice bottle of red plonk for dessert.

we hired a car for a couple of days and drove down to the tjapukai aboriginal cultural park, where we watched them do a little dance, learnt about bush food/medicine and then learnt how to throw a boomerang and a spear. ferret was the man of the moment and was the only one to catch his own boomerang. he got to keep it and i haven't heard the end of it since. i would like to point out that i could have caught mine too but i was scared of breaking a nail. boomerangs' are designed to KILL things you know.

another chunk of the day was spent being thoroughly entertained by mrs ferret on the kuranda skyrail. to do the whole journey takes about 30 minutes so considering she wanted to get off after 2 minutes, she did very well. 3o minutes is a loooooong time when you're not allowed to move, speak or barely breathe for fear of sending the gondola plummeting into the dense rainforest below or a crocodile infested swamp.

she had her eyes shut the whole time. i think mr ferret was trying to get the blood flowing back through his fingers in this shot.

we all took a sigh of relief when finally arriving in kuranda, mr ferret slowly regained feeling in his left hand, we enjoyed a lovely little pub lunch and then spent a couple of hours browsing the quaint little country shops. what we didn't know was that the route we had chosen to get back to civilisation, the kuranda railway, was just as bad height-wise as the skyrail.

it stopped at a lookout and this was the only time she looked out the window.

beautiful though.

cane toad racing. i was all set to have a crack until they said you had to kiss the revolting things. interesting fact: cane toad cricket will work too but the most humane way to kill cane toads is by either boiling or freezing them. ew.

hmpf, another interesting fact that i will never try.

pedro the koala.

what's that you say? not that interesting? believe me, i know. turns out the dawson clan are a family of weak bladders. i spent a majority of the trip either attempting to syncronise toilet breaks, trying to find a loo for someone or waiting outside the door for them muttering profanities under my breath.

on our second car hire day we drove up to cape tribulation. (mostly in deafening silence after a scuffle with ferret about something silly) it is a spectacular part of the country though.

cape trib.

crab holes.

like ferret, like son.

the dawsons.

as smooth as a....

Happy Days Part 1

well, two weeks and some 350 photo's later we are back from our 2nd out of 3 holidays in the year of holidays. we spent a week in sydney, of which by the end of, i was completely exhausted and just beside myself with joy at the idea of a week sunning myself in port douglas.

we stayed with my sis for the first few days until mr and mrs ferret arrived on the monday morning. again, the notion that ferret is completely and utterly USELESS at planning an event of any kind solidified in my mind on sunday evening. i thought i might just quickly check whether their flight was on time, turns out ferret doesn't have the flight number or the time of arrival. in all the six months of planning the trip with his parents he did vaguely remember something about them flying emirates. at this point he did what we would all do in such a crisis, and went to the pub for a few drinks with the boys. after threatening him with death, he managed to get hold of one of his sisters and slurred the details to me from the pub.

action shot of the taterman (in his swedish football shirt!)

just one of the girlies on the sideline sipping babychino.

just another shopping mall? let's zoom in a little shall we...?

that's right; while we are looking after her kids my sis is lurking behind the plastic plants trying to sneak in a quick milkshake...

when booking our apartment, i specifically requested a lower level as mrs ferret and i are petrified of heights. happy we got a penthouse with a spectacular view but not so happy being on the 14th floor or the entrance to the apartment being something of a suspension bridge.

one of just a couple of nights on the beers.

his favourite uncle ferret and auntie loggie took tate to tooronga zoo for the day.

obviously not real but he was terrified of them all the same.

mutton dressed as lamb? ferret dressed as penguin?

on our way for dinner for lin's (mrs ferret/grandma ferret) 60th birthday we caught a water taxi. at this point they had been in a plane, a taxi, a monorail, a ferry and a water taxi.

our gracious hosts.

rabbit and weasel.

mrs ferret.

dinner at café sydney.

Liberate or Incarcerate?

look, i'm sorry ok? i got entangled in this new phenomenon called facebook and between all the personal e-mails, facebooking, surfing the intermanet etc at work i haven't had time to blog... truth be told, life has been a bit uneventful of late. picture this; we're in the dead of winter, it's windy, cold, rainy, dark when you get up and dark when you come home and you are only left with the faintest memory of sitting under a coconut tree sipping bintang. we have the most annoying winters here, they're not pretty white winters like europe or blue skied Qld winters, they are just grey and yukky. winter also means one thing; drinking season (aka rugby season). which, in a nut shell, means that i am left on my jack jones every saturday night. i do believe there is one more game and then the souvlaki-and-beer-breath-pour-yourself-through-the-door weekly ritual is over for another year.

i had a bit of an epiphany the other morning while tucking in the corners of our bed. why do i have to do this? why is it assumed that i make the bed? was there a rules book that i read and it stated that i have to do this? how come i can't sleep in, get up, fart, make myself a cup of tea, burp and surf the internet for half an hour?

i mean, this was a typical scenario for us last week;

finish a long day at work, pick up a 6 pack of beer for ferret, get home and make ferret's lunch, take garbage out, pick up ferret from train station, cook dinner for ferret, load dishwasher and finally get to sit down at 8pm.

to make it clear, i don't blame ferret, i mean if i had someone waiting on me hand and foot i probably wouldn't complain either. but what i would like to know is, how did this come about? if i'm doing all this aren't i supposed to be unemployed? a 'house wife'? is this what all the bra burning was about? so, thanks to a bunch of radical feminists, we not only have to be a 'house wife' we also now have to work full-time? i'm confused. one thing i know for sure is that if there is such a thing as reincarnation, i wanna come back as a bloke.

Prait your hair?

well, as always, it went fast but boy-oh-boy am i nice and relaxed. we've been back almost 2 weeks and i still feel like i'm lying under the coconut trees on the beach. nup, not much going to stress me out.

most days were spent by firstly making the most of our 'breakfast included' deal, followed by a guilty walking off of our big brekkys with the sun beating down on our heads. i learnt early on that if i wanted to get to even touch a pair of sparkly sandals then i was gonna have to ditch ferret, who did the goose-step past all the glittery things while i almost had to run to keep up with him. after the goose-step we would spend a couple of hours cooling down and laze by/in the pool reading. afternoons were spent at our little hang-out on the beach with ferret drinking bintang, crap desperately trying to surf, and sanj and myself buying beads, getting foot massages, nails painted, sipping diet coke and cracking jokes about crap's fake tattoo and the length of ferrets toe-nails. we did the indonesian thing at dinner and although i was dying for a big, fat, greasy hamburger after a few days but not wanting to be the first and only one to break tradition i followed suite.

a fabulous time had by all but if i never hear the words 'you want bangle?', 'massage?', 'tlansport?', 'looky looky', 'where you flom?', 'you got australian coin?' again i would be more than happy.

the long awaited first pina colada of the holiday.

crap does love his little gay cocktails...

and another...

the classic before and after.

ferret thinking he has just gotten a crappy gunners DVD for his birthday.

and then realising that i had secretly bought him tickets to the gunners concert...!

the sari club memorial and the void where the club was.

shortly after this was taken he discovered that wild monkeys get angry when you taunt them with plastic wrappers.

yes, that is a look of holy-crap-i've-got-a-monkey-on-my-back-but-people-are-looking-at-me-so-i-have-to-pretend-i-am-not-utterly-TERRIFIED.

ferret and crap at our hang-out on the beach. i'm guessing the guys chose it because it was between two bars.

in my element.

pfft. fake tattoos are for girlies.

a rare sighting of the beach dwelling silver haired ferret.

sunset at legian beach.

it was almost worth getting dragged out of the shower for.

just a lazy arvo in the pool.

disturbingly, we think he actually liked having the flower in his hair... someone probably should've told him he had rice stuck to his forehead though...

but i topped off the holiday with the grand-daddy of all cocktails.